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The Johan Sverdrup Oil Field development has been given the green light and major contracts have been awarded. Johan Sverdrup is among the largest oil fields on the Norwegian shelf, and will at peak contribute with 25% of the production from the Norwegian shelf.

Summary Information

Description

The Brent field is situated 186km (116 miles) offshore, north-east of Lerwick, Scotland, at a water depth of 140m (460ft), and has four large platforms; Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta.

A fifth Platform, Brent Spar was removed

Brent Charlie is a fixed, manned drilling and production Installation for the Brent Field. It was installed in 1978 and started production in 1981. It consists of a four leg concrete gravity structure with a base of 36 reinforced concrete cells, which stand in about 141m of water. This supports a deck which supports drilling, process, utility and accommodation modules

The Brent Remote Flare fulfilled a safety function for the Brent Alpha and Bravo production platforms but became obsolete following the Brent Long Term Field Development (LTFD) and Brent Alpha Redevelopment (BAR) Projects and has been removed

Although originally an oil field, Brent is now producing predominantly gas

Conceptual Design and Detailed Design of 94 Man Replacement Living Quarters and Helideck Engineering, Procurement and Construction for Single Lift

Engineering Procurement and Construction of Drilling Module

Bravo Replacement Living Quarters

Charlie Replacement Living Quarters

Decommissioning

Technip: Diving operations to prepare for decommissioning of the Brent Delta facilities

History

1971 - Brent oil field discovered

1976 - Government approval given for development

1976 - First Oil Produced

1995 - Shell became embroiled in a public dispute over the decommissioning and disposal of the Brent Spar

2005 - The Brent Remote Flare was removed

2011 - The Brent Delta platform stopped producing

Geology

Brent Field, discovered in the far north of the area in 1971, contains oil and gas within tilted layers of sandy rock. 170 million years ago, these layers were part of a river delta.

Since then, the tilting movements, associated with the rifting Viking Graben have been followed by a long period of sagging. Muddy sediments - including Kimmeridge Clay, the source of the oil - have draped across the titled blocks (F33), filling the subsiding troughs between them, and sealing the eroded upper edges of the sandstone layers (F41) to form traps.

Much later, oil was expelled downwards into the sandstones from the thick mudrock, now deeply buried within the troughs.

The oil migrated up the tilted sandstone layers to collect in the crests. Some of the gas came from coal within the delta sediments. Oil is still migrating through the area. The sandstone layers, each more than 200 metres thick, have held over 500 billion litres of oil, for millions of years, within an area of 17 by 5 km.